First, Do No Harm
by mooncustafer
Summary: Deadwood/Wilkie Collins Crossover. At medical school, young Amos Cochran finds a mentor.....
1. Chapter 1

It was but early fall, but the air was crisp of nights - and it was night, after ten o'clock. The man up ahead was shivering despite his heavy traveler's coat. "Ill," thought young Cochran (he was studying medicine); then, "a foreigner, unused to our climate." A second look had told him the man was.. well, something exotic, anyways - Asiatic, perhaps, or half so. Curiosity piqued, Cochran wondered if he would be able to strike up a conversation, or if he dared. As he drew closer, however, his first impression of illness returned - the traveller's face was drawn, stretched, even, over the aquiline nose and cheekbones; the dark skin had nonetheless a sallow quality that was not entirely of the lamplight; and though his age seemed below thirty, the wavy dark hair was already greying at the temples.

By now, the student realized, he was himself the subject of observation - his presence was noticed, though he could not tell if it was welcomed. Still, the streets being lonely, a greeting seemed required to indicate he bore the other no ill-will.

"Good evening, sir. Are you waiting for the train to A----?" The traveller turned his large, dark eyes on Cochran - eyes in which the pupil appeared to have engulfed the entire iris - or perhaps the latter was merely very dark brown.

"I am." The younger man cleared his throat nervously.

"Might I then introduce myself? My name is Amos Cochran - returning to M------ College, where I study medicine. I'm in my second year there," he added shyly. Something had stirred in the stranger's eyes at the mention of the medical college - interest, and an odd kind of amused pity.

"I, too, am of that profession." The voice was soft, almost feeble, but characterized overall by a profound melancholy. Pretending not to notice the latter two qualities, Cochran proffered his hand. His interest was growing but so too was a nameless uneasiness.

The traveller's accent was English, and so far as Cochran's American ear could identify, educated - indeed the stranger's whole demeanour, belying his exotic and sickly appearance, spoke of gentility over mere respectability. He himself was beginning to feel rather a "jay" by comparison.

"And of that college - or shall be. I am Ezra Jennings, newly-appointed lecturer in anatomy."

"Then I am, more than ever, pleased to make your acquaintance."

* * * * *

_Looks like young Amos might have found a mentor. What kind of anatomical studies lie ahead? Will there be grave-robbing? Will there be Galvanism? Stay tuned!_

_Disclaimer -- Amos Cochran belongs to David Milch, Ezra Jennings to Wilkie Collins. Please don't sue/haunt me. My knowledge of 19thcentury medical colleges is pretty much derived from Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson, so this narrative is no doubt riddled with errors. M------ medical school is fictional, hence the lack of vowels in its name. Don't try any of this at home. Do not bleach. Hand wash in lukewarm water and dry flat._


	2. Chapter 2

_Lectures and Libations_

A month into term, the exotic Jennings no longer drew stares - but neither were most of his students or fellows on easy terms with him. His colour, his formality, the subtle impression of of ill health, but most of all the gentle yet terrible genius that looked out of those dark eyes silently forbade any kind of familiarity. Even Cochrane, who had taken a shy, dogged liking to the lecturer, had never quite lost the awe and discomfort that their first meeting had inspired.

One sodden afternoon in the operating theatre, when the smell of lamp oil and students close-packed in damp wool obfuscated any impression of cleanliness that might have been made by the fresh whitewash on walls and ceiling, Jennings, neat and sombre, drew a sheet off the patented ventilated copper table. All peered intently at that which lay in state upon the tray - the legs and spine of a large frog. A student turned the crank on the "influence machine," and the metal plates spun creakily. When a charge had built up, Jennings touched the end of a wire to the exposed spinal column, and the pale limbs convulsed. The class laughed.

"A cunning piece of puppetry, no?" he began, when the nervous titters had died down. "And yes, puppetry is all it is - we cannot recall this frog to life with a few volts or, like Shelley's misguided Prometheus, assemble a creation from dead matter. We cannot recreate the spark of life - we can only do all that is within our power to protect it." He brought the wire away and the limbs lay still once more.

The tavern frequented by the students was called the Arrow; it was neither reputable nor particularly disreputable; the chimney smoked, but then, so did most of the patrons; and the drink was tolerably strong without being poisonous. Following Jennings' lecture, a dozen or so of those who had been in attendance were discussing what they had seen. Cochrane, who seldom spoke at these gatherings unless a point was raised in argument, stood leaning against a wall, glass in hand. His fellows were in agreement among themselves that the twitching of the frog's legs had been an excellent piece of work.

"That foreign fellow's an odd one, to be sure," said a youth named Farrell, "but he puts on a first-rate exhibit, I'll give him that. It was worth being up to my goddamn omphalos in the pond last month, catching the goddamn frogs, to see-em twitch like that. Damme, but I wish old Burree could make his gross-anatomy lectures so interesting."

"Your cussing lacks invention," Cochrane muttered, but none heard him.

"I wish the materials for old Burree's lectures were so easily got as the frogs."

"Or so cheaply."

"You buy them from others?"

"It doesn't exactly raise the tone of our future profession to do the digging ourselves."

"If you leave it to others, how can you be sure of the cause of death?!" Everyone turned to stare at Cochrane's blunt question.

"Pipe down. You'll put folk off their drink."

"To hell with that. I'm sure Knox was a model of discretion as far as his neighbours were concerned, but he didn't ask enough questions about his own business, and it damned him."


	3. Chapter 3

_In which Cochrane works alone, and an interesting case presents itself:_

M------- college, being nothing if not a practical institution, and wishing to expose its students to real experience as soon as possible in their careers, so that they should waste no time in discovery if they were not cut out to be medical men, not only ran a charitable clinic in town, but sent certain of the professors, students in tow, to visit the outlying farms and homes. Jennings did not go visiting; his first few visits had proven how uneasy he made the local folk. Cochrane usually accompanied Dr. Burree, but come October the anatomy professor was laid up with an attack of rheumaticks, and the student was left to take over his rounds. It was therefore Cochrane who, early one evening, found himself called out to the Watts farm.

Farmer Watts lived with his wife and grown son, a hired girl and a couple of hands, and the patient with whom this narrative is concerned: his niece Lizzie, whose father, a widowed cloth merchant in the town, had sent her to live in the country after she was diagnosed with consumption. She had had one hemorrhage in the spring, but had recovered after a month in bed. Now, the message from the farm indicated, she had suffered another collapse just as the family were gathering for their supper.

It was dusk when Cochrane reached the farm: broad fields, their harvest brought in, and a few outbuildings around a gabled wooden house. Mrs. Watts greeted him, thanked him for coming out in place of poor dear Dr. Burree; Lizzie was upstairs where she had a room to herself - small but quiet - she liked to be alone, did our Lizzie, and it was best to leave her to herself, for she was an odd, silent child, though biddable enough, and no doubt much of her shyness was due to illness and not just her nature, though she did favour her departed mother, God rest her soul.

Lizzie proved to be a freckled angular girl of fourteen, whose dark hair was pulled into unbecomingly tight braids. She was sitting up in bed and looking to the window; as he entered she turned and started.

"You're not Dr. Burree."

"Dr. Burree's not well. I am Mr. Cochrane, one of his students. If I find your condition serious enough, I shall send for one of his colleagues."

"I am well, sir."

"Your uncle and aunt don't think so. Let me take your temperature before I choose a side in the debate." She put the thermometer in her mouth without complaint, but he felt her watching him inquisitively as her searched through his bag, and as he took her pulse and listened to her chest. He did not much like the sound of the latter, but the former was steady, and her temperature only a half-degree above normal. All in all, the girl was in better condition than he had expected - pale under her freckles, but not alarmingly so.

"Did you cough much blood, Lizzie, when you collapsed?"

"No. I don't think I coughed at all. I was in the back parlor, and it would have been dreadful to spoil Auntie's rug."  
"Do you recall anything that happened just before you fell down?"

"I was in the back parlor - and - and I was thinking about the Howards' garden and wondering whether there would be frost tonight, because my birthday is on Saturday and Auntie says they might let me have one of their late roses to wear in my buttonhole, only if the frost kills them - the roses, I mean - they can't give me one, you see?" She tilted her head to the empty side of the room as if seeking a blank page to sketch impressions on. "and then the wallpaper in Auntie's parlor has roses, on it, all twisted round each other, and I couldn't stop looking at it. Did you ever look at a wallpaper pattern until it seems to jump forward at you? Only you can put your hand through it, like a ghost?"

"I have never done so, but now I shalll make a note to try it someday. What happened next, after you finished looking at the wallpaper?"

"Nothing - I mean, the fender came up and hit me of a sudden; I suppose I must have fallen against the fireplace. I was afraid I'd be scolded for spoiling my dress but I couldn't move or speak. I heard Auntie, and then Uncle, calling me and I couldn't answer - finally they came into the room and found me, and I saw they were frightened but I still couldn't move, not until after Uncle had carried me upstairs, and then they sent for Dr. Burree, only you came instead."

"And at no time did you experience any coughing, bloody or otherwise?" Lizzie's eyes widened.

"You said 'bloody.'"

"As in 'containing blood.'" Cochrane paused. "And when I mean to swear, I say a great deal worse than that." Lizzie gave him a shy smile of shock and delight.

"I didn't cough any blood. I only fell down, and I was frightened, but I've quite recovered now." She sat up very straight against her pillow.

"Of the two of us," said Cochrane with mock sternness, "which one is almost a doctor? Let me examine the pupils of your eyes." He lifted the lamp from the bedside table and brought it closer to her little sharp face. The pupils were of equal size; they contracted as the light was brought near and he heaved a sigh of relief. At least Lizzie hadn't been getting into the household medicine chest. As he made to set the lamp back down, his patient's eyes rolled to the side, fixed on the light.

"Lizzie." Her eyes continued to follow the lamp automatically as he moved it back and forth. "Lizzie," he repeated, and passed his hand before her face. There was no response and no sign of recognition. Cochrane put the lamp down and settled himself to observe.

After thirty-six seconds, by his watch, Lizzie's face slackened abruptly; her shoulders slumped and her little body lolled to the left. As he caught her, she felt limp as a rag in his arms, yet her eyes were open. By her own account of her previous fit, he realized, she might be completely conscious, though immobile; he therefore spoke to her as reassuringly as he could while he propped her back up among the pillows. Forcing himself to stay his course of observation, he counted the passage of another eleven minutes before she blinked and began, haltingly, to recover her powers of voluntary motion.

"Lizzie," he said, when her eyes were once more focussed questioningly upon him, "I'm going to call up your aunt to sit with you, and then send for Dr. Burree's colleague, Dr. Ashton."


	4. Chapter 4

_Extract from the diary of Ezra Jennings:_

_October 17th, 1840._

Sky a chill bright blue, neither the deep blue sky of my childhood nor the grey sky of my father's homeland, but a sharp blue, well-suited to this rough young country.

Dr. Burree seemed to be recovering last night, and I decreased his dose to forty drops, but today he is in agonies again. Must learn to neither under- nor over-estimate an elderly man's powers of recovery. Meanwhile, Dr. Ashton, in taking charge of the Watts case, has managed the feat of taking credit for Cochran's report while rejecting it entirely - declares the cataplexy, etc, to be merely (merely!) symptoms of the girl's worsening consumption and has had her removed to the ward; a turn of events which has a least given me the opportunity to confirm the student's notes on the case. Severe narcolepsy, with night-hags, hypnagogic hallucinations, and cataplexy, the latter triggered by my first appearance by her bed. Though once recovered, she seemed to regard me with friendly curiosity, I thought it best to depart for the day, and to henceforward send Cochran to monitor her condition, at least during the afternoon and evening hours when she is most often conscious. Our study of this case is, of course, extra-curricular - over and above my teaching duties and his studies - but then long hours are the lot of a physician. I can state without vanity that I am blessed with somewhat more physical strength than the average man of my build; though of late I find myself suffering internal pangs in the early morning - age takes its toll on us all, I suppose. As for Cochran, though he looks as though a stiff breeze could knock him over, I have seen him to be an active youth, and perhaps more importantly, possessed of a stubborn determination to do right by the patients.

_October 22nd, 1840._

It seems to me that one can over-dose on fresh air as much as on any other substance - at least one can when it is served as cold as it is in the consumptives' quarters. Lizzie seems, to my eye, to be wilting day by day. I have argued with Ashton, have pointed out the severity of the night sweats (both C. and myself have, during our vigils, had to change the girl's sheets); have made the case that even if the narcolepsy were a symptom of the consumption, the treatment is doing nothing for either. The man, it seems, cannot admit to being wrong, even if the cost is a frail child's life. Burree, who is a stolid man, but not bound up by bride, and who might as Ashton's equal be able to move him, is still unable to leave his bed. I feel like a watcher by some shore, who sees a small boat in peril and having no craft of his own, cannot make the larger vessels move to her rescue.

_Evening. Quarter to eleven._

Patient's attacks seem triggered by strong emotions or by light and pattern. Her sensitivity to light, in particular, increases as the days shorten. Have instructed attendants to keep reflective objects away from her bed or covered up. As to the strong emotions, the ward is unlikely to arouse any save fear and loneliness. Cochran, when I spoke to him on the topic, believes keeping the patient placid is a poor solution:

"Sooner or later, she will leave this place and live her life - surely it's in her interests to build up her mind's resources, so that she may deal with the tides of human experience without suffering nervous collapse every time she hears a piece of news. Besides, I never knew a child to be made well by boredom."

"You are basing your forecast on the optimistic assumption that she will live to leave this place at all."

At this, he cursed Dr. Ashton, consumption, cataplexy, god, the devil and myself, in roughly that order. "What's the use," he cried, "of diagnosing what we can't fix?!" All at once he seemed to me to be pathetically young, and I felt a keen dread as I wondered what the years may do to him. For now, I thought it best to give him hope, frail or not.

"You are correct, that Lizzie is not encouraged by the hospital environment. I do believe, though, that she is encouraged by you."  
At this, Cochran's eyes widened, and he fell into the local vernacular:

"You saying she's sweet on me?"

"Surely you recall being her age - the passionate friendships, the craving for a half-understood romance? You've sat day after day by her bedside, talking to her, very likely giving her more attention than she has ever received from a grown person, barring only, perhaps, her mother - and you are not unpleasing to the eye, you know." This time, I could not forbear smiling at my young colleague's quizzical, angular face, and at his expressions regarding the last part of the argument. "It requires fine steering, of course: to lead on an innocent, particularly one in such a position, would be criminal; to break her heart the act of a brute; yet she needs some stake in this world if she is to keep fighting for her life. I have trusted to your honesty and discretion before - surely giving the child a kind word or two, without overstepping the boundaries of propriety, is no great task."

"I lack the gift of a bedside manner."

"Continue as you have been doing - it seems to have made a favourable impression. Only be sensible to the child's feelings."

"I think I find it easier to be sensible to the workings of her brain."

_October 26th. Half-past two in the morning._

Lizzie asleep, though she trembles from time to time, and bites her lower lip. Cochran is asleep in the chair by her bedside - I found him thus. He must have nodded off while making observations, for his notebook is still in his hands and his spectacles on his face. He has been working himself hard of late, even for a student. for myself, I cannot sleep - so I am keeping watch on them both as I write this. Neither one has the type of face that relaxes in a state of unconsciousness, and indeed Cochran's face appears all the more pinched and bloodless without those querying blue eyes open and expressive. No doubt if I had seen Lizzie as a healthy child her silent face would give me the same pangs. Enough of these thoughts - this is not a sane time of night to be wakeful and alone. Against my better nature, I shall rouse him.

_November 2nd._

All our arguments, all our conjectures as to Lizzie's course of treatment meaningless now. She fell insensible half-past eleven; by three o-clock no heartbeat detected. I write no more for the moment.


	5. Chapter 5

_The Very Secret Journal of Elizabeth Anne Watts, in the Fourteenth Yr of her Age_

_In 1873, workers replacing the wainscotting in a wing of M------- College found a tiny bound volume, scarcely two inches along the spine._

_Entries for October - November, 1840, appear below:_

_October 17th_ Dr. Burree is unwell so he sent his student Mr. Cochran when I fell, but he is not a proper doctor yet so when I told him about not being able to move he went and got Dr. Ashton, who says it is my recurrent illness getting worse and had me moved to the hospital. Auntie cried and will visit.

_October 18th__. Hospital, Day 1_ Woke in the night and there was a queer oriental-looking man by my bed. I thought I was dreaming but then had another attack. It is humiliating to go all limp like a doll but it was all right, he is one of the teachers at the medical school and his name is Mr. Jennings.  
--It is very dull here, but I have found a mouse-hole in the wall, a good hiding-place for this journal, better than my pillow anyway. I hoped the mice are moved out, and not dead.

_October 19th__. Hospital, Day 2_ It's too bright and cold. I got up and closed the windows but the other patients made me open them again because fresh air is good for the lungs. Mr. Cochran came by to see how I was. We talked about Mr. Jennings, who is his teacher. He obviusly admires him - I mean, Mr. Cochran admires Mr. Jennings.

The other patients argue among themselves as to who has the most elevated temperature. I am beneath notice in this respect.

_October 19th. M------ College Hospital, Day 2 - 7:24 evening_ Must have nodded off; awoke an hour ago to a merciful dusk and the voice of Mr. C. speaking to the attending nurse. He was concise in his questions, attentive to the answers. Still, his brain must be quite flat at the end of the day-shift. When he passed my bed, I whispered "You must be dreadfully bored." He made a wry face and pulling up a chair peered at me over his glasses:

"I was wondering if you were," he asked solemnly. He seemed keen to ask me questions, and began with how I had been sleeping of late, but seeing me tiring of the interrogation he turned to more chearful topics, asking me about life on the farm, if I had any favorites among the barn cats, and so forth. I told him about the big turtle that lives in our pond that Uncle says is a hundred years old.  
He smiled, but not as though he didn't believe me.

"I didn't have a whole pond,", he said, "but when I was your age I used to catch tadpoles in the ditches in spring. I'd keep them in jars and wait for them to become frogs, but my sisters always poured them out before they had got themselves more than two legs apiece."  
"That was mean of them."

"No, they were tender-hearted. They wanted the tadpoles to go free."

_October 20th. M.C.H, Day 3_ Beginning to wonder if I am indeed dying. Upon contemplation of the possibility, find I only I wish I was older, and pretty. If I die my relatives will visit my grave with flowers but they would do that any way. Relatives don't count for purposes of romance.

_4 o'clock_ They visited today though.

_October 21st. M.C.H (Consumption Ward), Day 4 - Three in the afternoon, more or less_ Awoke to chills again, washed, listless morning. I fancy myself ill enough now to compete in the Temperature Darby, but at least my cough has not worsened. Keep losing time, though, drifting in and out of sleep, then restless all night. Dr. Ashton says I must keep to bed and not read or think about anything too stimilating. It is a good thing he does not pay attention to little details like mouseholes in walls, or I would surely go mad with boredom.

_October 23rd. M.C.H., Day 5_ Mr. Jennings slipped me a book - _Ivanhoe_- on his visit today. It is one I have already read, but I dove into its kindly pages whenever no one was watching who might part me from it. In this big whitewashed room, any diversion is a minute in Heaven.

I had jumped straight to the part where Rebecca refuses the advances of Bois-Guilbert - it wasn't until now I went back and looked at the flyleaf - it's Mr. C's copy. So it seems I have them both to thank.

Mr. Cochrane's first name is Amos. He has funny backward-slanted handwriting.

_October 25th. House of the Sick, Day 7_ I had the nightmare again where the Phospherus Man is sitting on my chest and suffocating me, and I can make no sound or movement. A cold sensation on my forehead banished my glowing tyrent and replaced him with the thin dark face of Mr. Jennings holding a wet cloth to my brow. He wiped his long-fingered hands briefly on the edge of the blanket.  
Seeing me awake he nodded gravely to me and asked if I had been dreaming, so I told him briefly of the Phospherous Man, how he has haunted my dreams and stopped my breath at intervals since I was ten years old.

"He weighs upon your lungs?"

"Sometimes he squeezes my throat too."  
He was patient as I struggled to describe my nighttime tormenter. "The nightmare you describe is found among people in all times and places." He hesitated: "My mother used to call it "Amuku Be," the ghost that forces one down. It's frightening, but you must try to remember whenever it happens that the figure you see is just an image in your brain, and that you can't move because your body is still bound by sleep, but that there is no danger, and the feeling of suffocation will pass."

I can see now why Mr. Cochrane admires him so.

_October 27th. Hospital, Day 10_ Woke during the night again. Mr. Cochran was asleep in the chair by my bed, and Mr. Jennings was in another chair, watching him and writing in his journal. I don't think he saw my eyes open because after a while he set down his notes and came over to his sleeping assistent. He gazed down at him and stroked his hair before laying a hand on his shoulder and gently shaking him awake. It was the first time I had seen them in the same room and I cherished the sight of the friendship between them.

I turned my face away as the younger man opened his eyes so as not to interrupt their communication.

_October 30th_ Too tired to write.


	6. Chapter 6

_In which it's about time our protagonists decide to do something:_

It was dusk, and the day of Lizzie Watts' death. The hard frosts had come, and noone ventured outdoors after dark without a purpose, save Cochran and Jennings, who shared a common craving for the quiet found in the bitterly clear night. They were walking between the road and the College when the shorter figure stopped in his tracks and swore hard at the ground with his fists clenched. Jennings stood waiting in silence a few paces ahead; he watched his colleague until the latter's burst of emotion had quieted, then placed a hand on his shoulder. Cochran's head snapped up and his blue eyes blazed into those of the older man:

"They should autopsy. We should autopsy, if the damn fools haven't the sense. We've got to know - -"

"Perhaps," Jennings began miserably, "the poor child should have some peace at last--"

"She has it now, devil take you!' barked Cochran, "Has it, if there be any. No exam, no test we perform now can do her any harm. Ain't you the man who told me it's our sworn duty to protect life? What of our duty to others who suffer the same condition? Jennings - if you have any regard at all for her memory --"

"The girl has family."

"Who will be unable to bury her for some months, now that the ground has frozen. Till then she lies bundled on a table in the morgue, and you know as well as I they won't be looking any too close come spring when they coffin her."

"It's too horrible - too arrogant. We were both fond of her, but that must not change our course of action - "

"Arrogant? Ashton was arrogant when he let her die because he didn't investigate close enough. How can men of our profession be so weak-livered as to look away from anything? No matter the patient." The student was close to tears now. Jennings took his hand and clasped it fervently.

"You have convinced me. Forgive me a moment's weakness, lad." Cochran swallowed and nodded at his mentor, his store of words used up. "Which tests," Jennings continued, "do you think will we be able to perform, given the unofficial nature of the circumstances?" They turned their steps towards the College entrance.


	7. Chapter 7

_The Final Chapter -- In which things go about as well as you'd expect, i.e. not very:_

That night after finishing their evening rounds, they returned to Jennings' quarters, and drank strong coffee, made over a spirit lamp, in silence for an hour, until Jennings tilted his head towards the small high window.

"It's dark enough now for any piece of work." Reluctantly they pulled on their coats; they slunk down the stairs like hunted men; the lock on the morgue was as easy a toy as ever; the tools as carelessly strewn about. Cochrane's stomach pulled into a harder knot as their light fell on a huddled, shrouded figure at the foot of a table. Together, with numb fingers they lifted the bundle of calico that either could easily have lifted it alone. One man or the other must have had shaking hands, however, for of a sudden Lizzie's arm swung free of the winding sheet.

"Set her down! Gently." Cochrane took the limp hand to fold it back in; something impelled him to pause for a moment and gaze at it by the lantern. "The cuticles are not shrunken."  
Gingerly he touched the thin wrist; hoarsely he cried to Jennings: "I dare not trust my myself - there - can you feel a pulse, or do I go mad?!" Jennings dropped to the side of the prone figure.

"It is very faint, but you are not mistaken. Good God! They mistook a fit for death! We must get her to the college without delay - the theatre will be unlocked, and and we may be able to shock her back to consciousness with a cold bath or..." He fell silent as they hurried back towards the dark mass of the main building, Cochran by some unspoken agreement carrying Lizzie's limp and doll-like body. The student could not feel if her heart continued to beat as they had noticed moments before - he could not in any case have heard it above the dread throbbing of his own. Every corner the two scientists rounded on their way to the operating theatre might reveal a fellow student unable to sleep and pacing the corridor, a nurse checking the wards, or one of the doctors making a late call; any of whom might question their mission and waste minutes or longer while they tried to explain themselves.

At last the theatre was before them. No seam of light appeared betwixt door and frame, but Jennings nonetheless tried the handle carefully, slowly, with a look of such concentration as he were pleading with the door, willing the hinges to silence. Entering at last, he set down his lantern and and dared to light a second lamp; Cochran placed Lizzie on the copper table in the centre of the room and checked her pulse again - still present, still faint. Jennings was running a hand along a shelf of bottles, his lantern shining on the labels. "We might try smelling salts," he mused, "If the cold water doesn't work. There's a pump in the room at the back; I'll start filling the bath.."

"Jennings." Cochran's brain, despite his fear, had been working steadily since they had left the morgue with Lizzie. The cataplexies they had previously observed in the patient had seldom lasted more than ten minutes, and never more than half an hour; yet had she been laid in the charnel-house a full four hours ago. His mind showed him again the small huddled figure they had found at the foot of a morgue table. No one would have left her like that, on the floor; and her position had not suggested the fall of a dead weight...

"Jennings!"

"Hush lad! What is it?" In the suddenness of his understanding Cochran had been unable to keep down his voice.

"Not the bath! Not cataplexy. Hypothermia. She needs to be warmed slowly, not shocked." Jennings returned to the table, the same realization dawning in his face. "The fit was as long as any we have seen yet - long enough for her to be pronounced dead - but she must have returned to consciousness and movement scarce minutes after she was locked in the morgue - and unable to make herself heard, she was overcome by the cold of the room until she fell into another kind of deathlike state."

"I'll get some blankets from the cupboard."

As Jennings wrapped the patient, Cochran began chafing Lizzie's thin wrists as vigorously as he dared. For a quarter hour they worked.

Lizzie's first returning breath was a choked gasp - her second, a long and piercing scream. Her eyes widened in horror as the lantern's light gleamed on Jenning's perspiring features:

"The Phosphorous Man! The Phosphorous Man!" She would not cease crying and shrieking, even when Cochran held her against his chest, trying to murmur reassurances. Then her voice choked off as suddenly as the little body seized and fell once more silent, inert. In the sudden hush the other two heard sounds of alarm from the corridor outside and the floor above:

"Did you hear that ghastly sound too, or was I dreaming?" "Nightmare!" "A girl! A girl cried out!" "Did it come from the operating theatre?"

Jennings looked at Cochran. His brow was now very damp and his eyes were dark with horror at the import of what he was saying - yet his voice was as calm as if he had been delivering one of his lectures to assembled students:

"She's slipped under again. Listen - you heard noises in the theatre. You crept in and found me about to conduct some unholy experiment. Don't, pray don't, let them take her back to the morgue. When she's recovered, you can let her know the truth; or as much of it as you would dare tell a sensitive child." Clasping his former student's hand, he leaned across the table and kissed his forehead. "Take care of her, my dear friend; take care of yourself." Then he turned and vanished through the darkened door that led to the pump room and the side exit. Behind him he could hear Cochran counting slowly to twenty before he began his shouts for help.

The wind cut through Jennings' coat as he tripped down the stone stairs and made for the nearby woods. He would lie low there through the day, then cut across country to the next village, then the next, then to New York where there were a few friends who might yet help him, even with the news of his infamy preceding him. The placid stars overhead were still uncorrupted by grey dawn. He thought of Cochran, and of Lizzie, if she ever woke again; and wondered which of the three of them would have the hardest part to play.

_The End_


End file.
